Saving Each Other

About the Book

On the surface, Victoria Jackson is the American Dream personified: from a troubled childhood and unfinished high school education she overcame immeasurable odds to create a cosmetics empire valued at more than half a billion dollars. Married to Bill Guthy—self-made principal of infomercial marketing giant Guthy-Renker—Victoria's most treasured role was mother to three beautiful, beloved children, Evan, Ali, and Jackson. Suddenly, Victoria's dream life is broken as she begins to battle a mother's greatest fear. In 2008, her daughter, Ali, began experiencing unusual symptoms of blurred vision and an ache in her eye. Her test results led to the diagnosis of a disease so rare, the chance that she had it was only 2%.

Neuromyeltis Optica (NMO) is a little understood, incurable, and often fatal autoimmune disease that can cause blindness, paralysis, and life-threatening seizures, and afflicts as few as 20,000 people in the world. At the age of 14, Ali was given a terrifying prognosis of between four to six years to live. Saving Each Other begins just as Victoria and Bill learn of Al'’s disease, starting them on a powerful journey to save Ali, their only daughter, including bringing together a team of more than fifty of the world's leading experts in autoimmune and NMO-related diseases to create the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation. Told in alternating viewpoints, Victoria and Ali narrate their very different journeys of coming to terms with the lack of control that neither mother nor daughter have over NMO, and their pioneering efforts and courage to take their fight to a global level. Bringing their story to light with raw emotion, humor, warmth, and refreshing candor, Saving Each Other is the extraordinary journey of a mother and daughter who demonstrate how the power of love can transcend our greatest fears, while at the same time battling to find a cure for the incurable.

About Victoria Jackson

Having achieved success as a Hollywood makeup artist, cosmetics entrepreneur and television infomercial pioneer, Victoria Jackson prefers to think of herself as "a goodwill ambassador for makeup." A recognized trailblazer in the infomercial industry, Jackson altered a global beauty aesthetic with her "no makeup makeup"—a foundation that was the cornerstone of her eponymous line Victoria Jackson Cosmetics, which has enjoyed over a half billion dollars in sales, and continues to grow. Jackson has also garnered a devoted following through her two briskly selling books: Redefining Beauty: Discovering Your Individual Beauty, Enhancing Your Self-Esteem and Make Up Your Life: Every Woman's Guide to the Power of Makeup, a deeply personal account of her experiences in business. Today, Victoria's primary focus is the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation, which is dedicated to funding biomedical research in the search to understand the pathophysiology and biochemistry of Neuromyeltis Optica (NMO) Spectrum Disease. It is her greatest hope that "together we will reverse the effects of NMO and eventually cure this disease." Married to husband Bill Guthy of infomercial giant Guthy-Renker, Victoria Jackson is the mother of three children and together they reside in Los Angeles.

About Ali Guthy

Ali Guthy, a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has kept a journal since she was a young girl. At The Buckley School in Los Angeles, she served as co-editor-in-chief for her high school's award-winning newspaper, The Student Voice. She is also the managing editor of The Spectrum, the newsletter she created with the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation. While at Buckley, she had record-setting achievements on the tennis court, finishing with an overall winning record of 165-22. Ali also received Buckley's coveted Head of School Award—given to a student who demonstrated leadership, academic achievement, character, and service on behalf of the school and community. Ali has also been honored with numerous awards and in the media for giving a public face to NMO and for her leadership in reaching out to newly diagnosed patients and their families.